Crops & Clips: Grackles

They are black, yet colorful as a rainbow. Specialized structures in their feathers reflect and refract light to produce iridescence. Grackles are abundant in our south Florida neighborhood. We host two resident species, Boat-tailed and Common Grackles. Boat-tailed Grackles' eye color may vary irregularly from yellow in some of the northern races to dark brown or almost black further south.

Boat-tailed Grackles range along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts as well as the entire Florida Peninsula. These large grackles (males measure 16 1/2 inches/42 cm) breed in colonies in marshes as well as suburban landscape trees. A few older alpha males compete to maintain their dominance over a group of females and subordinate males. 





During the winter they gather in same-sex flocks, and in early spring begin courtship and the males compete for dominance with elaborate displays. They sometimes fight viciously, but usually it is all a show:



Males displaying:



Crossed swords:



The male often closes his nictitating membrane during displays:



Group display



Male eating millipede:



They often gather at the water's edge:





The female Boat-tailed Grackle is smaller (14 1/2 inches/37 cm) and so different in appearance that some early observers thought it to be a different species:



Female boat-tail reflection:



Female Boat-tailed Grackle and waning gibbous Moon:



Common Grackles breed all across the eastern two-thirds of the US and Canada. They are very adaptable and have expanded their range westward as land has been cleared and developed. They are omnivorous but their taste for grain has made them serious agricultural pests. They especially like to  uproot corn as it sprouts. Their diet includes eggs and nestlings of native birds and are known to kill adult birds of smaller species. 

They are smaller (12 1/2 inches/32 cm), even more vividly iridescent than Boat-tails and have yellow eyes:



Note the pattern of iridescence of our local "Purple" Grackle, a race of the Common Grackle which has a blue back (another race, the "Bronzed" Grackle reflects a glossy brown) :





"Bronzed Grackle" is found in the northeastern, north central and western US:



In Illinois at feeder:



Two male Boat-tailed Grackles display on a fence rail along the boardwalk at a local nature preserve:





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